Alright, so we know we need to make some changes and we know why, right? The key is to break it down into manageable chunks. Just how do you do that? Here’s a plan of attack to try.

Step 1: Decide What Needs Changing

Grab a piece of paper and a pencil. Pick one area for now, time management or organization. You can do the other one after you complete the steps for this one. Make a list of what needs to change. I want you to be specific here. I will give you a some examples.

For organization you may have:

• organize and end paper clutter in the house
• organize the homeschool/craft/hobby/gardening supplies
• organize our laundry system
• organize the kitchen

For time management you may have:

• consistent hours for reading/working/playing
• stop being late everywhere
• end procrastination

Step 2: Prioritize

Remember how I talked about priorities yesterday? Well, they really are important. You can NOT do it all at once. No one can. So, take your list and rank your goals (you do realize you just set some goals in step one, right?). Like this:

1. Organize the kitchen
2. Organize the homeschool supplies
3. Organize our laundry system

Make sense? Good. Next step.

Step 3: Break it Down Now

Take your first priority and dissect it. What you need to do is break it into chunks. Identify the major contributing factors to the problem. I also want you to include negative consequences that you have right now because of this problem area. You want to change these.

Again, be specific. Write these down. Think hard about this and be honest with yourself. Let me show you a possible break down.

Goal: organize the kitchen

• the sink is always full of dirty dishes
• table is cluttered
• fruit goes to waste because it gets buried by other stuff
• we eat out most nights because the kitchen is a mess

Step 4: Again, I Say, Prioritize

Take those contributing factors and rank them in order of priority. Maybe take the most annoying or difficult of them to tackle first. Or a to rank them in order of size from smallest to largest.

The point is to set your plan of focus. If you have the time to tackle a big project first, go for it! The feeling of accomplishment will be great. If you are overwhelmed by the scope of your goal, start small and work your way up. As you check things off your list, your accomplishments will keep you motivated to keep going!

Now, put your negative consequences underneath your list of contributing factors. This is WHY you WANT to change. Alternatively, you could put the opposite down, if you are more motivated to work towards something. I tend to work better at something when I remember that I really don’t like what happens if I don’t.

Step 5: Just Do It!

Work through your list. Do first things first. Do not move on to the next task until you have the first one down or completely finished. I can tell you this, it really is easier to maintain all of your things each day than to continually run damage control on them individually.

Find solutions that work for your family, don’t give up if you try one way of doing it and it doesn’t work. You really can change this. It just takes one day, one hour, one minute at a time. Keep putting that best foot forward and getting up WHEN you fall.

Tomorrow I’m going to answer a question you might be having about the content of this series. See you then and don’t forget to check out the rest of the bloggers participating in the series!